


Ashes to Ashes

by the-wandering-whumper (water4willows)



Category: Hocus Pocus (1993)
Genre: Angst, Hospital, Mystery Illness, Whump, hurt Max Dennison, weak, worried dani
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 18:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20878562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/water4willows/pseuds/the-wandering-whumper
Summary: Fifteen years after the events of the movie the consequences of Max’s fight with Winnifred Sanderson in the graveyard are finally revealed.This story contains a major character death.





	Ashes to Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Another huge thank you to Jo for the beta!

They don’t talk about that night in the graveyard, not even amongst themselves. It’s not something that’s decided, but rather something that just happens. Things get better at school for Max and they all settle back into their normal lives. When Max and Allison graduate high school, they get married. Too young, some say, but after you’ve defeated an ultimate evil, things like waiting until you’re a little older to get married just don’t matter so much anymore.

Dani’s in the middle of her 3rd year of post grad when she gets the call and suddenly it’s like she’s 11 years old all over again. 

She’s attending a university in an entirely different state, just like she did for undergrad. Not because she wanted to get away from Salem, but because it’s the best veterinarian school in the country. She has friends, a great job, and the brightest mind in her class. Max makes it a point to talk to her fairly regularly, mostly to regale her with tales about the dumb things their parents are doing to try and combat their empty nest syndrome. Sometimes he’s even got a story or two to tell her about the shenanigans his students have gotten up to. He teaches English at the highschool and a few years ago they made him head coach of the football team. Their lives are peaceful, idyllic – blessed, even. Well, until this day in October.

It’s drizzling outside her window. The trees have reached their full autumn color, but you can’t tell through the persistent fog that has enveloped campus for the past few days. She’s got all the lights on and pretentious jazz playing in the background when her cell phone lights up with a familiar face. It’s a face that reminds her of home, of a charmed childhood once evil was defeated, and she answers it with a smile on her face.

“Hey big brother! I was just about to call you!” And that’s not a lie. She hasn’t heard from Max or Allison in several weeks and calling them herself has been on her mind for days.

“Hey kiddo,” a very feminine voice replies. It’s Allison, not Max, and Dani straightens up in her chair.

“Hey Allie. What’s up?”

Allison is silent on the other end of the line for a moment and Dani starts to bite her nails. It’s a nasty habit she picked up in those years after... the incident.

“You need to come home, Dani. Max isn’t doing so well.”

Everything that happens next passes by in a blur. All she manages to get out of Allison over the phone is that Max is sick and Dani needs to come home now. Everything else, Allie promises, will be explained when she gets there.

She packs automatically, barely noticing the items she throws into her carry-on. Her roommate books her the first flight she can find out of Boston and drives Dani to the airport, talking constantly about how she’ll collect Dani’s coursework and let all her professors know about what’s going on. Dani doesn’t hear a word of it, just stares out the car window, watching the streaks of zigzagging rain traverse the glass. She doesn’t even remember getting on the plane, and it’s not until she’s being enveloped in her sister-in-law’s warm embrace that she becomes aware of anything at all. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

Allison steers them over to a bank of bolted down chairs near the baggage claim. “All they can tell me at this point is that his body is shutting down. They’ve been running tests on him for weeks and have no idea what’s causing it or how to stop it. They say he has the internal organs of a 90 year old man and the best explanation they can come up with for it is some disease called Progeria, which I guess is some condition that can make you age faster than you're supposed to. He’s dying Dani, and the doctor’s don’t think there’s anything more they can do for him.”

Dani doesn’t look at Allison as she explains, just stares down at her ruined nails, a few of them still sporting the black nail polish she applied months ago but forgot about. She mulls the information she’s being given over in her head and comes to a startling conclusion. They don’t talk about it. She hasn’t even thought about that night in fifteen years. It’s something from the past that has no place here in her future, yet it’s refusing now to stay buried. “It’s because of that night, isn’t it?”

For a moment, Allison doesn’t answer. When Dani looks up at her sister-in-law, her face is grim. “That’s what we’re thinking.”

“Have you discussed that with his doctors?” She asks, even though she already knows the answer.

“How could we?” Allison replies. “What could we possibly say to them that would make any sense?”

Dani opens her mouth to offer a suggestion, but finds she has none to give. What would they say to people? ‘ _ Oh, excuse me Doctor, but fifteen years ago my big brother had a run in with a trio of evil witches. He sacrificed himself to save me, you see, by drinking a potion that allowed one of the witches to suck away a part of his life force. We thought he would be okay, but apparently that wasn’t true. So maybe there’s a spell or a potion lying around that you could try and use to save his life?’ _ No, even if they did try to explain all this to someone, they would never be taken seriously. 

Dani feels her shoulders slump as the weight of her brother’s situation settles down around her. “Can I see him?”

“Of course you can,” Allison says, putting a sisterly arm around Dani’s shoulders. “I’ll take you over there right now. He’s been asking for you all day.”

***

It’s bright and sunny in Salem, autumn color bursting forth unimpeded from the trees. Pumpkins line picturesque walks and children play in oversized piles of red and orange leaves. She can hear their joyous screams and is reminded suddenly of her own screams that one fateful Halloween night, when her cries rose above the wind, laced not with the mirth of childhood merriment, but with the terror at the prospect of becoming some evil witch’s next meal. She shudders and Allison does not miss it.

“You okay?”

Rather than answer the question, Dani voices one of her own. “What about the book? Is that spell book of hers still around?” To this day she hasn’t uttered the names of the women who tormented her dreams for so long, and she’s not about to start now.

“I tried, Dani. That was the first thing I thought of, but I don’t think the magic works if… if the  _ sister’s _ aren’t alive anymore.” Even Allison can’t bring herself to say their names.

“What about trying to raise Billy again? I bet he could...” but Allison is already shaking her head.

“Billy wasn’t a witch. He never used magic, he was just a victim of it, like we were. I seriously doubt that he’d be able to help us.”

“But we could at least try!”

Allison shoots Danny a sharp look that nearly robs her of her heartbeat. “I don’t think he has that much time.

***

Dani’s not sure what to do with herself when they finally arrive on Max’s floor about 30 minutes later. Allison is no help on that front, merely pointing down the hall towards his room before fleeing to the relative safety of the hospital cafeteria on the pretense of getting them coffee. Dani is both slightly relieved and partially annoyed by this abandonment. There are only three people left living who know what happened in the graveyard that night, what’s truly going on with Max, and now is not the time to separate. Dani has half a mind to follow after her sister-in-law and drag her back, but decides against it in the end. She approaches Max’s room with trepidation and stops just outside the closed door. 

The room has been quarantined, a bright orange sign hung beside the door frame demanding she enter only in full gown and mask. There are boxes of what she supposes she’s supposed to put on, but she ignores them and, checking for signs of nurses who might not let her in without the ridiculous getup, slips quietly into the room.

Her brother has been given a private room. It faces west so the space is aglow with soft, afternoon light, tinged in a warm burnt orange thanks to a filter of autumn leaves from outside. It’s warm inside, too. Due in part, she figures, to the astronomical number of machines crammed into the room. They encircle his bed like moons orbiting a planet – each one independent yet still necessary to the survival of the bed’s inhabitant.

Dani has had this picture in her mind of what Max might look like ever since Allison mentioned the Progeria. As silly as it sounds, she’s been expecting to find him looking old and frail - a young man aged well beyond his years. But the man sleeping fitfully in the bed before her is anything but. Max looks normal, healthy even, though she notices the unnatural pallor of his skin and the dark circles pooling beneath his eyes as she inches closer to the bed. He’s lost a bit of weight, but other than that, he’s the same Max he was when she last saw him a few months ago. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that they were in the middle of a hospital right now and a nasal cannula was snaking its clear plastic way across her brother’s face, she might even had been convinced that this was all some kind of stupid joke. That’s just the type of thing Max would try and pull. Ever since she went off to school Dani has refused to return home for Halloween. Maybe this is all just some ruse to try and get her home? Approaching his bed, she half expects Max to jump up, laugh at the epicness of his prank, and pull her into one of those world famous Max Dennison hugs. But the moment passes in silence and she quietly calls out his name.

“Max?”

Her brother opens his eyes. They’re tired and unfocused and sweep the room for a confused moment before finally settling in on her. A huge smile spreads out across his face, taking over every inch of real estate, as well as his eyes, as he lifts his arms from the bed. “Dani.”

Affection has never been in very short supply in their family so there’s no hesitation when she rushes forward into that embrace. It’s not the jubilant or mischievous welcome she’d been expecting, and she has to be careful of the all the wires and tubes, but she’ll take it. “I missed you, big brother. So much.”

Max is a warm, reassuring presence beneath her and she tucks her head under his chin and just rests there against his chest for a moment. The machines whirl and click around them but she can still hear the faint sound of his heartbeat ticking away beneath her ear. She focuses in on it, because she knows now that is going to be the baseline on which she measures all future events going forward. As long as that sound is still there, as long as it never falters, never sputters out, everything is going to be ok. 

Max breathes in and squeezes her tightly, “I missed you, too.”

On the verge of tears, yet refusing to let herself breakdown now, Dani straightens and studies her brother carefully. Max looks incredibly tired all of a sudden and keeps closing his eyes and swallowing convulsively around what Dani can only imagine is considerable pain. She hooks one of those uncomfortable hospital chairs with a foot and drags it closer. Plopping down, she takes hold of one of her brother’s hands and knows it’s going to be a long time before she lets it go again. “Are you okay?”

It’s a stupid question, she knows this, but Max manages a weak smile all the same, and chuckles. “Not according to my doctors.”

Dani’s not sure what to say to that. The usual platitudes come to mind:  _ don’t worry, big brother, what do they know? We’ll find a way to get you out of this. You’re going to be fine. I’ll make sure of that… _ but all of them fall flat. If what’s going on with Max is due to what happened in the graveyard 15 years ago (and how could it not be at this point?) then there isn’t anything anyone can do to make this situation anything other than what it truly is: Max is dying. Max is dying, Dani has been summoned home to say her goodbyes, and there’s nothing she can do about it. Fifteen years later and Winnifred Sanderson is winning.

Dani shivers at the sound of the name in her head, chastising herself for thinking it aloud in the first place. The name still invokes a certain kind of power that ripples through her body, spreading goosebumps across her skin. The feeling of being lifted from the ground assaults her without warning, the memory of rough hands closing around her throat and trying to pry her mouth open springs to the forefront of her mind. She closes her eyes as that night in the graveyard becomes a vivid memory playing out across the blackness behind her eyes like some horrible, homemade horror movie.

Max squeezes her hand harder. “It’s ok, Dani. It’s over. She’s gone.”

Her brother’s words release her from the memories and she opens her eyes to the relative safety of the hospital room. The danger has passed for her. Max is the one who needs protection now, and she can’t afford to be overwhelmed by the past.

“Do you think all of this is happening… because of that night? Because of what she did to you?” They haven’t discussed these things in fifteen years and even now it’s difficult for her to put the questions out there. There’s a resistance to the words, like they’re not supposed to be talking about this, even now.

Max is quiet for a moment while he thinks things through. “I guess it could be some weird form of Progeria like they’re suggesting, but look at what’s happening to me. I’m in my 30s. The disease is hereditary and usually only effects kids. They took something from me in the graveyard that night, Dani, and we always thought there was a chance something like this might happen.”

He’s not wrong. In the days following that fateful Halloween night they did discuss what happened a little, but it was mostly just to get their stories straight should anyone question them about what happened. They had, after all, broken into the museum, the school, destroyed private property, interrupted the town Halloween party, and half the turret in Max’s bedroom had been blown to pieces. But it had been Allison who noticed Max wasn’t acting entirely normal. For weeks after the fight he was slower than usual, tired all the time, weak -  _ a persistent virus, perhaps _ , the family doctor had suggested. But then whatever Winnifred Sanderson had done to Max seemed to balance itself out and he was back to being his normal, annoying self in no time. That was when the unspoken rule to never talk about the events of that day went into effect. And stayed in effect for fifteen years. Until, you know, today.

Dani shakes herself away from the memories again and focuses in on Max. He hasn’t stopped smiling at her, but his tired eyes are drooping and breathing seems to be something he can no longer do with ease. All of it feels so wrong because Max is a force of nature. Idleness has never looked good on him. “How long… do they know how long you’ve got?”

Max’s smile finally falters and he looks away. 

“Days?” comes his quiet reply. “Weeks? No one can say for sure. I’m a medical anomaly, apparently,” the smile returns but it doesn’t reach his eyes, “and they have no idea what to do with me.”

“But you know,” Dani nudges.

Max sighs and seems to collapse down into himself. “It feels like it did after that night in the graveyard. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like all the energy has been sucked out of me and my body doesn’t have what it needs to keep going. I can feel myself slipping and it’s not stopping. Last time it stopped.”

“Does it hurt?”

Max has taken to staring up at the ceiling or picking at a spot on his blankets during their conversation but this question has him snapping his eyes back up to Dani. “I don’t think the sun can save me this time, Sis.”

Stupid tears spring to her eyes and she doesn’t try to hide them. This whole situation is monumentally unfair. They won, for goodness sake! Fifteen years ago they defeated a terrible evil and sacrificed so much, so this shouldn’t be happening, especially not to the one person who gave the most.

Dani brings Max’s hand up to the side of her face and rests a wet cheek against the back of it. When she closes her eyes she’s back in the graveyard watching Winnifred Sanderson haul him up off of his feet by his shirt collar, relives the moment when his soul manifests itself around his body in a halo of flickering blue light, gets sick to her stomach when she recalls the sight of that witch feeding off her brother’s exposed life force like some kind of leach while Max grew weaker and his light diminished. He shouldn’t have survived all that. Thinking back on it now, it was brutal and terrifying, and the fact that 15 years have passed with seemingly no consequences for what’s been done to him seems like a bit of a miracle. 

They don’t talk again and Max finally falls back to sleep just as Allison returns, carrying with her the smell of freshly brewed coffee. She sets two steaming cups of it onto the rolling table and while Dani would like nothing more than to snatch one up, she doesn’t. She feels too numb, too empty; as insubstantial as the thin wisps of steam escaping from the lids of the coffee cups. There are somethings that not even caffeine can fix.

***

They bury Max in the Salem cemetery two weeks later. There’s talk of cremating him and taking his ashes to California to spread them in the places he once loved, but Dani argues for a Massachusetts burial. It just feels right - if any of this can be defined as “right.” This is where he will be remembered most, after all, where he fell in love, where he made his home. 

Where he saved the world. 

The entire town seems to come to the funeral and the astronomical number of parked cars shuts down the little road headed into the cemetery until people, rather than cars, clog the lane. Dani shakes hands with all of them, hundreds of people if she counted right, some of whom she recognizes and others she doesn’t. But they all seem to know her and share stories with her of how much Max meant to them. She’s exhausted by the end of it all, but doesn’t regret a moment of it.

When the crowds thin and she’s left to finally stand beside her brother’s grave alone, Dani thinks back on the desperation of the past few weeks. Of how she searched and searched for a way to save Max - even going so far as to reach out to a local coven for help. What a mistake that had been. She’d gone to them in the hopes of meeting with professional women who were dedicated to their craft and would take her seriously and offer to help. What she found was a bunch of quacks looking to cash in on a local legend. Those women wouldn’t have known magic if it had bitten them in the ass. She’d tried the book after that, but the damn thing had literally disintegrated in her hands the moment she tried to open it. The energy in the house didn’t even stir when it happened. Like it’s former inhabitants, like Max, it was dead. There was no more magic there. 

And now here she stands, hovering near the edge of her brother’s grave, wondering how fate could have been so cruel as to deny her family a way out of this. She grabs a handful of freshly turned earth and sprinkles it on the top of Max’s coffin. Fifteen years ago, he’d paid the ultimate price to save her life, and now the only way left to pay him back for this is to live that life to the best of her ability - suck the marrow out of life, as it were. And as the sky finally breaks open and begins its own type of mourning, Dani vows to do just that.

***

Two weeks after the funeral, the Sanderson sister’s house burns to the ground and hundreds of years of history go up in flames. The historical society ladies - with their silly hats and pretentious little meetings – lament the loss. The two women who watch the fire burn idly from the comfort of their car a few blocks up the road from the blaze, do not. They sit there for what feels like hours, never leaving until all that remains of the Sanderson sister’s home is a smoldering pile of ash. Not until the ghostly form of Max is lead away by Thackery Binx into the mist and disappears forever. 

If the fire department suspects arson, they don’t say a thing. 

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been sitting on my computer for years. I’ve gone back and forth on posting it and finally decided that this is the year I finally do it. It always bothered me that Max never suffered any consequences over his fight with Winnie so that was the inspiration for this fic.


End file.
